CUT from tHE SAME CLOTH
[DISASSEMBLY OF EMPIRE]
2025
DeCONSTrUCTED FLAGS
In 2024 I returned from the US with the world in flux, contemplating the political upheaval and whether a shared history denotes a shared future. Nationhood — never benign, but long a slumbering division — seemed a renewed metric, with geopolitics reconstituted as a ledger ordered by those who will be ‘great’ (again) and placed ‘first’.
Cut from the Same Cloth (Disassembly of Empire) is a work that examines common threads in the design and composition of the Australian, British and US flags, and asks what their deconstruction — divulging hidden seams and frayed edges — offers for this moment.
White Australia has always defined itself through proximity to colonial power. I propose this identity needs to be carefully unstitched, and a new order — assembled from the pieces, or perhaps material wholly new — should stand in its place.